Screening rooms, listening rooms and quiet networks for Burbank, from Magnolia Park bungalows to Rancho estates and the hills.
Burbank is a working town. A large share of the households we meet here spend their days on a lot or in a post house, and that changes what they ask of a home. They know what a properly calibrated picture looks like, they can hear a room that has never been treated, and they would like the technology at home to be as dependable as the equipment they use at work. It is a good brief to be given.
The requests here skew technical. A screening room that holds a reference picture rather than a bright showroom one. A den where dailies can be watched without an argument about colour. A listening position with treated walls, controlled reflections and a display that is calibrated and stays that way. We build those rooms the way we build every cinema, with acoustics, sightlines, lighting and calibration treated as one problem, and we are comfortable working to a specification rather than a mood board.
The housing stock varies more than the flat map suggests. In Magnolia Park and around Chandler the bungalows date from the twenties to the forties, so cabling goes through attics and existing chases and the craft is in leaving no trace. In the Rancho Equestrian District the lots run large and the property often includes a barn, a tack room or a guest unit, which means wired runs to outbuildings, cameras on the bridle path side and gate access at the end of a long drive. Up in the hillside streets the lots climb and the views open, so glare control matters as much as coverage, and the network needs cable to every level. Near the Media District and toward Toluca Lake the houses sit closer together, and sound isolation stops being a luxury.
On a close lot, a room that thrills at nine o'clock can annoy a neighbour at ten. Isolation is structural work: mass in the walls, a solid core door with proper seals, decoupling so bass does not travel through the frame, and ducting designed to move air without carrying sound. Done during construction it is straightforward. Done later it is still worth doing, and the door alone is usually the single biggest improvement.
Yes, and it is the request we hear most often here. It means controlling every light source in the room, choosing a display or projector and screen suited to the room's real dimensions, treating the walls so reflections do not lift the black level, and calibrating with instruments rather than presets. We document the settings too, so the room can be checked and restored later.
Often, yes, if it is designed that way from the start. The compromises are in seating position, speaker placement and treatment, so we agree what the room is primarily for and protect that, rather than pretending one layout serves both perfectly.
With mass, decoupling and sealing, in that order. Layered drywall with a damping compound, a solid core door with perimeter seals and an automatic bottom, isolation between the drywall and the frame, and duct runs lined and routed so they do not carry sound. Acoustic panels improve the room, they do not contain it.
Yes, with a wired run to each structure wherever the ground allows, and a point to point link where trenching is not realistic. Every building gets its own access point, so the barn, the guest unit and the main house share one network, and the gate and driveway cameras run on the same system.